Playing police chief is fun -- until it's not

Dialogue choices in This is the Police allow players to choose how they wish to handle events such as interrogations, phone calls and press conferences.

You and the local mob boss understand one another just fine. You do him a favor, he gives you a cut. Simple.

If only everything were that easy.

The mayor's a crook and the press is out for blood, not to mention the mountain of red tape that makes up your everyday routine as chief of police in the upstanding city of Freeburg.

The entire department is crumbling around you, but no matter. You just have to keep it together for six months. That's when your forced retirement kicks in -- a gift from the beloved mayor, who hates your guts, for what that's worth.

Problem is, you've played it straight for too long. Now you only have 180 days to come up with a $500,000 nest egg to carry you through once the paychecks run out. Keeping things legal is, of course, entirely up to you.

So what's it going to be?

That's how things stand at the outset of "This is the Police," a unique adventure/strategy video game that released for Xbox One last week after debuting on PC and Mac last summer.

Gameplay is broken up into two sections: There's the story, which is told mostly through cutscenes, and then there's the day-to-day grind that makes up the chief's workday.

The latter is where things really get interesting, as "This is the Police" revels in the minutiae of office work in ways most games would never dare.

Every night, for example, the chief sets the staff schedule for the following day.

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Players have to either approve or deny requests for days off, and also ensure that officers aren't being overworked to the point of making mistakes on the job.

Then there are all the special interests demanding a piece of the department's resources. The mayor needs officers to guard an upcoming event, the mafia kindly requests that you look the other way the next time a big heist goes down, and the press wants to know exactly how you feel about being given your walking papers by a corrupt official.

Everyone wants a favor in This is the Police. Make the right friends and your department will reap the rewards.

And that doesn't even touch on the fact that, politics aside, there's still a department to run. Every day takes place over the course of a few minutes. As calls come over the scanner, it's up to the chief to weigh the scope of the threat and decide which, and how many, officers to send in response.

It's a guessing game. Sometimes a seemingly harmless call blows up into a major event, while other apparent emergencies turn out to be false alarms.

Each employee is uniquely talented, which is displayed in his or her "professionalism" trait. The higher that number is, the more likely he or she is to make good decisions and bring back positive results.

But be careful who you send out. Those officers won't be available to respond to other calls until they return to headquarters, and there are only so many blue uniforms to go around.

Every successful encounter boosts the professionalism trait for the officers involved and also makes the department look good in the eyes of City Hall. If a suspect escapes -- or worse, if a civilian or officer is killed -- you might see your budget slashed and be forced to cut positions.

Then there are your detectives, who handle long-term investigations with the potential to break up gangs and yield huge rewards for the department.

It's an awful lot to juggle at once, but this strange mechanic of living each of the chief's final 180 days, one at a time, is initially a gripping experience.

Unfortunately, after a while the novelty wears off. Somewhere around day 30 it stops being new and fun when an officer calls out because his cat is sick, and instead you're just left with another staffing headache.

These are the moments where the game's story should take over, though it simply can't muster enough intrigue to keep players entertained.

The dialogue takes place in cutscenes, with a blocky, but beautifully vibrant, animation style that also sets "This is the Police" apart from the crowd. The writing isn't so great, and it's needlessly crass in all the wrong places.

I never felt a connection to any of the characters. As such, I never agonized over whether to betray an old friend, and never lost sleep about the chief's spiraling personal life. In a city full of selfish lowlifes, it really didn't seem to matter whose side I was on.

Eventually, simply getting to the finish line felt like a second job, with all of the hassles of workplace turmoil and none of the payoff.

The unique gameplay elements are enough to make "This is the Police" warrant a look, but don't expect the larger story to hold things together once the day-to-day grind begins to feel like a chore.

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